Our One-Day Whirlwind Trip To Chicago - Part 1

 This episode is part 1 of the Chicago recap; it will continue in the next episode, including the promised description of the "Taj Mahal of porta potties" and covering the remaining tourist adventures.

Word of the Episode: Flabbergast

• The hosts dive into the word "flabbergast," inspired by previous use when describing the "Coldplay incident." They share their own definitions (astonished, shocked to the point of near speechlessness) before consulting official sources.
• Definition: To surprise greatly; astonish.
• Etymology:
  • The origin is uncertain.
  • "Gast" is an archaic English word meaning "to frighten" or "scare," possibly related to "aghast."
  • "Flabber" is less clear; could relate to "flabby," "flap" (suggesting trembling in shock), or possibly a Scottish word meaning "to boast" or "be worn out."
  • First known print use was in 1772, already being noted then as a "new and unsophisticated word."
• The hosts note "flabbergast" is mostly used today in hyperbolic or ironic contexts.

Family One-Day Chicago Adventure

• The hosts recount a whirlwind one-day trip to Chicago with their kids, undertaken partly because of a special airline deal ($30 round-trip tickets) and partly because they wanted to do something more "exotic" for spring break.
• Travel details:
  • Wake up at 2:45 a.m., depart local airport at 5:15 a.m.
  • Fly to Chicago Midway (first time for at least one host), found it less hectic than O'Hare.
  • Rented a car for convenience (especially helpful with kids and car seats), and to store items during sightseeing.
• Early mishap: One child got flustered at airport security for keeping hands in pockets, but TSA staff were polite and helpful.
• Breakfast: Stopped at a diner where the hosts were "flabbergasted" by the high cost of milk ($16 for four small milks), enforcing a water-only rule for the rest of the trip.
• First Attractions:
  • Garden of the Phoenix: A Japanese garden in early morning; enjoyed the peaceful start, puzzled by a nearby unusual building (discovered to be the Obama Presidential Center, under construction).
  • Ancient History Museum: Located near the University of Chicago. The family accidentally walked about a mile extra due to a GPS routing error through the campus in the heat, resulting in some grumpy kids and a restroom emergency. Kind construction workers directed them to public temporary bathrooms.

The episode closes with an invitation for listeners to reflect on whether their itinerary was "flabbergasting" and to interact with the show.

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Any views expressed on this podcast are those solely of the hosts and is for entertainment purposes only. None of the content is medical advice or financial advice.

Special thanks to Tim Wright aka CoLD SToRAGE for his permission to use the song Operatique.

Transcript

I Hate Talking: 0:29

Welcome to episode 70 of I Hate Talking. Hi everyone. So we'll jump right into our word or phrase of the episode, and that word is flabbergast. OK. So this was a word that I used probably I guess 2 episodes ago when we were talking about the Coldplay incident, which I guess is pretty much fallen off of the news cycle now. I here here and there, but mostly it's people making fun of it still. There you go. So, in the description of the events that I saw transpire in the video, I referred to the woman as flabbergasted and thought it would be a fun one to talk about and see what the official definition is, as well as the etymology. Yeah, OK. So flabbergast in the way that I would use it or interpret it if somebody used it would be a person. That is in a state of shock, almost to the point of non-response, and that would be accompanied with certain facial expressions to indicate that shock or some sort of verbal response where maybe they are too surprised to even respond. So that's my off the cuff definition. I don't know if you have anything to add to that before we look up the official definition. Yeah, I know, that's very similar to what I had in my mind. The question I have is, I've always heard it as flabbergasted. And initially you called it flabbergast. Is there the word flabbergast, or is it always flabbergasted? Well, I would assume that it could be used as a noun and a verb and maybe even an adjective, but I guess we'll find out. So from our favorite Oxford language dictionary, flabbergast in terms of the verb usage is surprise and typically used in reference to a person to surprise someone greatly or astonish. So that is the simple definition. It actually doesn't really give much more definition than that. And it can be used as a past participle in terms of flabbergasted. So all the different things that you can do there with such words, flabbergasting or if just using it alone as a verb, flabbergast. Are the words broken up anyway? I'm like, I don't know what the word flabber means or the word dastard. Are they two like, is it compound word? Well, suppose we'll get into that with the etymology, but for those that are simply listening and do not have the ability right now, perhaps because you are driving or doing other activities, the spelling of this is F L A B B E R G A S T. So it does seem like perhaps it is the combination of flabber and gast, but as I was spelling it, I actually think I typed it wrong because I was thinking that it would be similar to the word aghast. Where that is actually spelled with a H in between the G and the A, so A G H A S T, which is defined as filled with horror or shock. So I would have assumed that flabbergast was actually with a G H A S T at the end, but it is actually simply G A S T. OK, hm. But what is the word GAST spell? Like what is that, is that a word? So according to Google, it is an archaic word or even described here as an obsolete verb meaning to scare or frighten. OK, I mean, very similar. Is it the same word, just a different spelling then, like the English version versus the American version? No, it looks like it's always been used in such a way that it doesn't really matter if it was a European or American. Usage that it is simply obsolete now in terms of GAST as a standalone word. So I guess perhaps we can compare and contrast the word aghast with the H versus flabbergast and see if there's any overlap in the etymology. OK. So we'll start with Aghast, and that came from late Middle English and was a form that came from gast, just G A S T, which came from old English gain, which was probably influenced according to this brief research here by the word ghost, G H O S T. And it really seems to have originated in the English for aghast. Nothing -- really in reference to any Greek or Latin roots -- here. OK. It reminds me of like in Minecraft, it's not uh a gas, but it is a ghast, is a character like a mob in Minecraft, that is like a white ghost. And I'm sure that's where they got that from as well. So in terms of our official word of the episode, flabbergast, that etymology says that it is uncertain from where it came from. But it basically does theorize that the last part of that word, gast did come from the root word. Gassed and gain in the old English that later became used as the hat with the GH and there is a little bit of information here that says the GH probably was some overlap from some Irish dialects where that GH would be more present in terms of making sure that it was pronounced correctly from the different words and spellings, I suppose. OK. So I was almost on the right path with Irish, I said English, but. I should have said OK? Are you allowed to say the Irish are you gay? I guess I don't know. I don't know. I guess some people might be offended by that because not all of it is. That's true. So there's less information and alignment on the term flabber and where that comes from. There are some theories that state that it comes from flabby or flap because when somebody is flabbergast. Or flabbergasted, they will be in a state of shock and trembling and not be able to stay still. And there's also a Scottish word and this actually makes more sense to me, just given the history that we talked about in terms of gast and aghast that it came from a Scottish word, flabbergast, which means to boast or to be worn out with exertion. OK. And the first appearance of this word in print was according to this research in 1772 that actually complained about new and unsophisticated words such as flabbergast. That's funny. Is it a word you hear nowadays? I feel like I only hear it when someone's being ironic or like hyperbolic. That is typically how I will hear it uses when it all. So, that is a bit of the meaning and etymology of flabbergast, but don't really have a whole bunch of definitive etymology and history on this one. So a lot of theories, but I think the main two are the flabby or the Scottish word for meaning to boast or to be worn out with exertion. OK. So not only did we use that word a couple of episodes ago when we were describing the woman's state of shock and speechlessness and all that when confronted with this particular situation at the Coldplay concert, but people were also flabbergasted when we told them that we were taking a one day trip to Chicago. Yeah. One of my kids' teachers didn't believe us. She asked me afterwards and was like, I thought that was like a tail or a yarn he was telling me. I was like, no, we, we did. Yes, so we did actually do that. We do not live in the Chicago metro area, so the trip did entail taking a flight from our hometown direct at least, so we didn't have any connections that we had to do into Chicago Midway. And the genesis for this particular trip was because we stayed locally for our spring break while others at the kids' schools and other friends went to somewhere, so that was one of the reasons that we were looking for somewhere. Beyond our normal range that we would typically visit with just driving distance in a day to find something further out and more quote unquote exotic. And then also there was a particular airline that had a sale and essentially the round trip tickets were like $30 total. Yeah. I was, so it was an easy like, let's do this. It's relatively inexpensive because of that sale. And uh we talked about spending the night, but hotels are expensive, especially for a larger size families. So we took off at like early morning, like, we left our house before 3 a.m. around then. And we returned about midnight. And so, right? Yeah, I think that sounds about right. I think our departure time was 5-15 a.m. from our home airport with our direct flight into Midway, and then, yes, our return flight was something like 9-45 I think. We, yeah, from Chicago. Yeah, we pulled up at our house and it was like 12-02. cause you were so bummed, like, you wanted to say we did it in one day, and we were 2 minutes later than an actual day. Yes, it was still less than 24 hour period that we were traveling or on the move for nearly 21 hours, I guess, of the 24 hour period, but it was not contained within the same calendar date, but almost made it by 2 minutes. We did so much. Like, I feel like we did almost everything we wanted to do in Chicago. There were a few things that were on our list and we'll probably get into that, that we didn't get to do. But overall, it was great and we slept on the airplanes and the kids slept often. We rented a car for that day. And they fell asleep often. Once we got in the car to drive to the next destination, they'd wake up and we just kept going. Yes, so we did have a rental car, that was one of the things that we did add on later because initially we're trying to see if we could do this with public transport, but since we were not spending the night anywhere, we decided that we could have a rental car and then be in command of our own routes and timetables as well as sort of have a home-based uh store some of the light things that we were Traveling with so that we didn't have to have backpacks similar to our New York trip. We were able to take a few things that were essential on the airplane and then leave those in the rental car while we visited various attractions. So, some places say no backpacks and large bags, so then we would have had a hard time if we had Ubered or something. Not only do we have a hard time because some of our kids need car seats still, we'll be tracking those around. But also, we wouldn't be able to go to those locations with a backpack. That's true. So I think for the remainder of this episode, we will just recap sort of all the different things that we did in this whirlwind of a trip to Chicago and we'll see if you, our listeners are flabbergasted at the end that we did all this in one single day. -- Or if -- it sounds fun and you want to do it, let us know. That's true. It was fun. It was a lot of work. Would you do it again? Yeah, I would probably do it again. I think the trip was not without its hardships, but when you're traveling with 4 small children, any sort of travel has some sort of unexpected thing or whatever the case may be, so. I think I would do it again. What about you? Yeah, I would definitely do it again. And it's not too dissimilar from things that we have done in our past, even before kids, where like I would come out and take red-eye flights to visit you in California or vice versa, or like fly directly from a work location in the previous work life where I did more travel or some of the trips that we've done just as a couple or our New York trip that was not all that long ago that we also have a podcast episode about. Yeah. So like we said, this particular trip began at around 2-45 a.m. and that is when we woke up and loaded everybody up into our personal vehicle and drove to our local airport. With sufficient time to go through security and make sure we had any particular water bottle refills and bathroom breaks and be ready for our boarding time, which is at 4-45 a.m. in order to have our 5-15 a.m. departure. Now remind me, was one of our kids was having a hard time passing through security? Was that on the way there or on the way back? I can't remember. Do you remember what I'm talking about though? Not precisely. It wasn't a big deal, but he was trying to hold back tears. He was getting really frazzled. Young children, they have him go through the metal detector instead of the full scan. And he had his hands in his pockets, and I guess that was setting off the metal detector. They had him back up, and try again and went off again, and they had to back up. And he was like holding back tears. He was checking his pocket again and everything, and then I think they realized like, keep your hands out of your pockets. And he walked through and it was fine. But I felt bad for him because it was like a hard start to like, He was getting really overwhelmed and nervous that he wasn't going to pass security. Yes, I think that did happen on the departure from our hometown. So I do recall that specific thing now where that particular kid was holding his hands within his pockets going through the metal detector and it wasn't setting off the metal detector, but it is a security procedure that TSA is following that you're not allowed to do that because theoretically you could be holding something metallic in your hand. Inside your pocket and because your hand is covering it, it actually will not be picked up by the metal detector. So they are just following their policy and procedure. I didn't know that and they were so polite. They were so kind with him. It wasn't like they were being rude. I don't want to say make anyone think that at all. They were very kind. He was getting very frazzled and I felt so bad for him. Well, there you go, that's also must be why it was the origination because I don't know if people would have been that plate in Chicago. That's right. We had family visit recently and they were like, y'all are so nice. I was like, I know we are. So we did our various things to get ready for the flight and then boarded that flight and I think it was pretty uneventful flight. I think some of the kids did enjoy sitting next to the window and being able to see the early morning light that was present at this early departure time and then like you said, I think most of them slept. I think I myself slept. Yeah, we got to see the sunrise, and yeah, everyone now, I didn't, I'm such an early morning person. When I'm awake, I'm awake. So I slept on the way home cause I'm not a night person. But yeah, I was just wide awake and enjoying the quiet. So that was it for that, right? Yeah, I think a relatively uneventful flight and then landed in Chicago midway. Which I think was perhaps my first time in Chicago Midway because I have traveled quite a bit in my past and would always go into O'Hare. So, Midway was a nice little airport. It is much smaller than O'Hare, less busy, a little bit easier to get around. But you still have to take the shuttle to the rental car facility. So we did that and got our van that we used for the duration of the trip, then began our tour of the Chicago area. I think by that time everybody was a little bit hungry, so we did find a diner and had some quote unquote home cooked meals and I think the food was pretty good. Yeah, it was really good. I was a little bummed because we let the kids each get milk. I naively think about like when you order from a kid's menu. Uh, you know, usually it comes with a drink. That's why we got the milk, cause normally we get water only. Uh, the milks were $4 each, and that was, that hurt. That's true. And you, I paid the bill when you saw it after you questioned it, and I was like, we paid $16 for milk. It was a very expensive milk. Yeah, but the food was good and that was a nice experience, but I told the kids water only from then on out. We were done. That's true. So from there, we then proceeded to a Japanese garden. And I believe it's called Garden of the Phoenix was the exact name, and we visited that in the early morning hours, and there was a few other people there, but this was a weekday, so not very busy as well as the fact that it was during working hours, but there are a few other people there visiting the Garden of the Phoenix, but we had a nice time just walking around that area and that's where we saw that very strange building. I don't even know if you know what that building is. No, I know you were really bothered by it. Like you kept being like, what is this building that they were building across the lake from us? Is that a lake or a river? Yeah, some sort of body of water. I'm not sure there was a lake on the garden side, but I think that was a river that was between the building and the garden. So we'll have to put on Instagram a link in the picture because it sort of just looks like a villain's layer from like a Bond movie or something is how I would describe it. And I looked it up afterwards. It's actually President Obama's like presidential. Legacy building -- for the college or -- for just like his presidential legacy that he's building, I guess I have to look up the exact name of it is. Yeah, it's interesting because it just looks so smooth. Like there's not windows or corners. It's just like this slick a frame almost building. Or rectangle, I guess, it's not necessarily a frame, but it's, it doesn't look like anything that is like natural or even standard in terms -- of -- you're saying President Obama owns this building or his foundation or whatever, yes. What are they doing with it? I think it'd be used for various meetings. Is he from Chicago? Chicago, so that is, yes, why? Yeah, he has that like entertainment company now and stuff, right? I suppose so. It is called the Obama Presidential Center. OK. No other information about what they actually do there? Well, they don't do anything there because it's still under construction, but according to the website skyscrapercenter.com, it is going to be used as a museum. For President Obama? No, I don't know. And it is owned by the Obama Foundation. I mean, it's a really cool looking building. I disagree. -- I think it -- looks. Very unnatural and almost. Distasteful. OK. Uh. I get what you're saying about the Bond villains, cause it definitely feels like that, like the top would pop open, so vehicles could fly out or something. Yes, I did see a quote from somebody on X. I have no idea who this is, but Cliff Sims says about this building, this is hideous and a reminder that noble ideas produce beauty and evil ideas produce ugliness. Oh. So, I think he's in the same boat that he finds the building sort of repulsive. OK. Anyway, a bit of a sidetrack there, but after the Phoenix Garden or Garden of the Phoenix rather, then we went to the Ancient History Museum, is that our next stop? So this particular museum is, I guess on the premise or very adjacent to one of the universities in Chicago. Yeah, I think it's on campus there, and it's a beautiful campus, and we parked on the street, and it's all street parking. And I was pretty excited that we got a good parking spot. And one of our kids was sleeping in the car, so you took the other kids, started walking, and I was waking him up because he was sleeping, didn't want to wake up. So we just start following you and I start realizing, where the heck are we going? This is so far away. And I think it was on drive, not walk. But they took us on the whole tour of the college. We should have only walked 0.2 miles, and instead, we walked 1.1, I think it's like, so about a mile extra. It was really hot and that was probably the most bummer grumpy moment that we had the whole trip. The kids were tired of walking. It was really hot and it's just like this never-ending loop. And so finally, I just told you, you just need to turn here and keep walking. And then we found it. We did. And like you said, I think the GPS that I was following must have been on drive mode because it was a one-way street that we would have walked the opposite way of traffic, but if you're driving, you couldn't go that way, so it was routing us the entire way around some of the college campus there. Yeah. So, yeah, we got a great tour. It was beautiful. Some of the buildings look like castles or whatnot reminded me of it. So, I took pictures. But by the time we got to the museum, a couple of the kids were very grumpy and hot and needed to use the restroom, and then there's no restroom there. So it was a rough start to the museum. But we did find a restroom and I don't know if you visited those restrooms, but it was like a quote unquote construction restroom because the construction site guy overheard us and kindly told us where we could go. Yes, so, and it was not a quote unquote construction site restroom. We were not using the restroom that the construction workers were using. We were using restrooms that were set up temporarily while the restrooms were under construction inside the building. Oh, OK. I thought that these were his restrooms. I don't know if the construction workers use them or not, but these were actually specifically installed for the public to use while the other ones were, it was like the Taj Mahal of porta potties. So we'll end this episode here for part one of our Chicago trip, and you can tune in next time to hear the exciting description of this porta potty, as well as the conclusion of our trip to Chicago. So, from your friends at IH Talking, until next time, remember, it is only through talking that we begin the journey to understanding.